SUPERMARKETS
Merry Morrison Christmas
Wm Morrison Supermarkets PLC reported Christmas sales that surpassed estimates, raising investor hopes that the UK’s grocers enjoyed a better holiday season than other retailers. Same-store sales excluding fuel rose 2.8 percent in the 10 weeks that ended on Sunday, the Bradford, England-based company said in a statement yesterday. That beat analysts’ estimate for a gain of 1.8 percent. “More and more customers found more things they wanted to buy at competitive prices at Morrisons this Christmas,” chief executive officer David Potts said.
BREXIT
London promises tax relief
The British government on Monday pledged on Monday to ease the potential harm to more than 100,000 companies that might have to pay sales tax upfront on goods imported from the EU for the first time after Brexit. The changes included in a new taxation bill, one of many laws passing through parliament, have alarmed company bosses, who said the move would create cash flow problems and increase the cost of doing business. “It is an issue, [for] which the government and the Treasury has sympathy,” British Junior Treasury Minister Mel Stride said during a debate in parliament. “It is something that we will be closely looking at.”
TECHNOLOGY
GoPro cutting 20% of jobs
GoPro announced Monday it will cut more than 20 percent of its staff and signaled it was willing to consider a sale following weak holiday-season sales. The camera and technology company said it would cut its workforce of 1,254 to fewer than a thousand. It also plans to exit the drone business and CEO Nicholas Woodman is to accept a salary of just US$1 this year. The company’s share price plummeted amid the disappointing reports. A source said that GoPro hired JPMorgan Chase to advise it on strategic options, including a possible sale. Woodman earlier told CNBC that the company expected to remain independent, but would consider a sale.
FINANCING
Port warned over credit
An Australian deep water port linked to one of the world’s biggest planned coal mines should lock in refinancing within six months of a loan maturing in November to safeguard credit ratings on its debt, S&P Global Ratings said. Adani Abbot Point Terminal Pty in Queensland state, controlled by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, has to refinance about A$326 million (US$256 million) of the loan due in November, S&P said. The credit assessor currently has a “BBB-” credit score and stable outlook on the port’s rated debt securities. “We expect the refinance to be completed on time,” S&P analyst Meet Vora said in a telephone interview. “If it’s within the six months of the maturity and nothing’s happening we start getting a bit concerned, which is where we need to start taking some actions.”
AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai bucks electric trend
Hyundai Motor Co on Monday showcased a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered vehicle at the CES consumer gadget show, bucking the all-electric trend of most rival automakers. The South Korean manufacturer debuted its Nexo, a sport utility vehicle that uses voice commands, artificial intelligence and can be transformed into an autonomous car. “We call this the next future utility vehicles,” Hyundai vice president Lee Ki-sang said. Hyundai said it plans to sell the Nexo in California later this year, in a bet on hydrogen even as many rivals turn to battery power.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts